This movie begins with a beautiful woman named "Ran" (Kaori Shimamura) stealthily wading ashore from a small boat onto the beach of Ishigaki Island which is a small island that is located near Taiwan but belongs to Japan. Not long afterward Ran enters a restaurant and shoots the leader of the Taiseikai faction of the Yakuza, along with a couple of his bodyguards, and then departs the establishment in great haste. Although only slightly wounded, in order to avoid being caught by members of the police or the Yakuza she takes shelter in a bar owned by a man named "Yoichi Fujinami" (Takeshi Yamato) who just happens to be closing for the night. He notices that Ran is injured and after treating her wounds allows her to stay for the night. It soon becomes known that Ran is an assassin from Hong Kong who is known as "the Black Orchid" and that she isn't quite finished with her mission. Yoichi, on the other hand, is a former member of the Yakuza who has broken off his relationship with them but still retains a close friendship with the man named "Yaguichi" (Takanori Kikuchi) who was the second-in-command of the Taiseikai group and needs to capture or kill Ran as a matter of principle. To further complicate matters, Ran's next assignment is to assassinate the leader of the island's Taiwan mafia who goes by the name of "Ho" (Hakuryu). But with the police, the Taiwan mafia and the Yakuza looking for her this won't be easy by any means. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this turned out to be a pretty good movie in the "xx Beautiful series". One particular difference is that, although it has a couple of scenes of a sexual nature, the film itself isn't quite as brutal or graphic as some of the others and that actually works to its advantage. Likewise, having an attractive actress like Kaori Shimamura certainly didn't hurt either. In any case, I found the movie to be quite entertaining and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Above average.

Keeping straight Japanese girls-with-guns movies with titles like Beautiful Beast, Beautiful Prey and Beautiful Killing machine is no mean task - sort of like trying to keep straight the lesser Baldwin brothers - but unlike the Baldwins, most of these are pretty good. This one features Kaori Shimamura as Ran (aka The Black Orchid), an assassin for the Mob who feels little remorse in killing, since her job mostly involves snuffing rival mobsters. When the Mob targets someone half decent for a change, however, Ran's odd morality forces her to wipe them out on his behalf. The resulting sequence of well-staged shoot-'em-ups deliver enough ventilated cadavers for a whole season of Law and Order. Basically that's the plot. There aren't many surprises, but director Ikeda's trademark slick camera movement and wacky tilts give the exercise a lot of visual style (although his equally trademark shadowy urban landscapes sometimes make the action a bit hard to follow). Kaori looks good and gets topless a fair bit - always a worthy distraction - and the action moves along at a brisk pace. Overall, this is a professionally staged and shot and very slick looking piece of cinema. It's just not a very original one.

Reading the reviews here, I wonder if I watched a different movie. Honestly I think this movie is a waste of time. Yes the protagonist looks hot with a gun but thats about it. This is a B movie and IMO a bad one at that. The story is of course formulaic. Girl out to avenge the murder of her sister by some yakuza pimps and the man who unknowingly saves her then must choose between old friendship or his feelings for her. The starting was good then it went downhill. The subsequent action scenes pales in comparison to the simple opening sequence. The ending felt like they run out of budget, anti-climatic and for an "action" movie there was no action. Not recommended.....

BEAUTIFUL BEAST is a pretty typical 90s era pinku-style film, relying more on action and gun-play than the sleazy story lines of this genre's predecessors. This film follows much the same template as Masaru Konuma's BEAUTIFUL HUNTER, though the story lines are different...Ran is a hit-woman who goes after a yakuza boss for the death of her sister. Along the way she befriends a bar-owner who turns out to be an ex-yakuza member. Things get hairy when the bar-owner has to choose between his loyalty to his old crew, or the hottie hit-woman...A few good gunfights, a relatively steamy (but over-long) bar-top sex-scene, a little bit of torture - pretty much the same ol' thing for this type of film - but I dig these films a lot, so that's not a bad thing. Nothing extra-noteworthy about this entry, though it's relatively entertaining. Not quite as good in my opinion as the aforementioned BEAUTIFUL HUNTER - but worth a look anyway...7/10